Sentimentalizing Treaties: Sources, Positivism, and the Power of Emotions in International Law-Making

BUIS, EMILIANO JERÓNIMO

Ekaterinburg

Congreso; XIV Euro-Asian Law Congress 2021 *The Value of Law*; 2021

Ural State University

Law is usually conceived as a rational ground, a social construction emanating from the need to objectivize passionate controversies and to find discursively structured solutions to avoid the use of vengeance. Nonetheless, it is also possible to think of law as the result of passions and therefore emotionally apprehensible. From a perspective focused on international relations, it would seem that, in the absence of a superior authority, interactions among States are guided by their feelings and conveniences. Indeed, their behaviour seems less structured on rational and justified reasoning than on national impulses and immediate reactions, sometimes inexplicable from a logical dimension.I will attempt to discuss here the conceptual paradigm of emotions in the field of weapons treaty regulation. For practical reasons and because of its inherent complexity, I will focus here on a specific case-study (the formal conventional sources creating the legal framework for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation) but I hope to show that some of my conclusions can be transplanted to the legal analysis of the positive regulation of other weapons under international law.